In this vivid biography of an enigmatic founding father, David Stewart depicts Aaron Burr, the third vice president, as a daring, perhaps deluded figure who shook the nascent United States. In 1805 the nation was not yet 20 years old, the government consisted of a few hundred people, and the frontier swallowed up our army of 3300 soldiers. Burr had challenged Jefferson, his own running mate, in the election of 1800, but his ambition hardly stopped there, and he actively planned to found his own empire on the Gulf of Mexico—and pull the western territories away from the United States. When finally he was tried for treason, Burr's case forced men like Jefferson and Chief Justice John Marshall to reassess the ultimate nature of the U.S. government.

"Stewart's sympathetic but unapologetic study of the enigmatic Burr ... transcends its subject in exposing the frailty of early America's westward ambitions. Highly recommended for readers of Revolutionary-era biographies and early U.S. history."—Library Journal